Mayor Brandon Johnson may not have the steadiest hand in actually running the city, but he does have a knack for how to talk about running the city.
That was on full display Wednesday when Johnson delivered the fourth budget address of his term as mayor. He’ll need to convince the people to reelect him before he might deliver another one.
The budget address Wednesday clearly is just the opening round for a tussle that could, if anything, prove even more contentious than last year’s.
Even so, the brewing budget fracas over the mayor’s $17.6 billion plan is far from an unhappy development. Rather, it’s a sign of increasingly effective stewardship of the city’s fiscal resources from an independent-minded City Council that last year passed its own budget. And the mayor disdained that one so much that he refused to sign it, then slow-walked implementation in some areas.
The city’s budget is an instance in which fractious disputes between the mayor and the City Council may actually be a healthy development for city government. It signals more scrutiny, more creative problem solving and more need to work out compromises that can ultimately benefit the city and its people.
If an independent City Council becomes an expected feature of the budget process, we really will begin to see a more deliberative, and perhaps more fiscally responsible, government.
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And there is an idea that’s quietly gaining steam: a proposal in the state legislature that could lead to passage of a city charter for Chicago. Such a change could help institute a more structured and analytically advanced budget process, along with numerous other developments that would serve the city well.
City charter, I say? Yes. And if the name of the concept hasn’t put you to sleep already, I thank you for that.
The term has all the panache of parchment and quill pens. Where are the likes of Johnson’s brand-meisters when we need them?
Yet despite all that, a charter for Chicago is a compelling concept that could strengthen the budget process — along with many other aspects of the city’s lopsided government structure, which in practice cedes extraordinary power to the mayor.
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Solutions to some of the structural shortcomings came up for discussion unexpectedly in a City Council 101 session earlier this month, hosted by the Better Government Association’s BGA Policy unit.
The idea was to bring together leading voices from a spectrum of the council to talk about the upcoming budget season: Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, the mayor’s floor leader; progressive independent Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th; the moderate and avowed city charter proponent Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th; and Bill Conway, 34th, a leader of the Budget Accountability Coalition. That’s the group that pushed through its own budget last year.
The aldermen assembled to talk about the city budget, but then a city charter brainstorming session broke out.
“The mayor’s budget team has 53 people,” Vasquez said. “Fifty-three people that work on a budget year-round. We have COFA, which has about four or five.”
COFA is an acronym for the City Council Office of Financial Analysis. It was created around 10 years ago to serve the council, is inadequately staffed and works at a disadvantage because it has no direct access to the city’s financial data. Instead, COFA must rely on the mayor’s office for the information it needs.
A city charter could fix that, Vasquez said.
Aldermen mentioned other needs a charter could address. A member of the City Council could run council meetings instead of the mayor, for example. There could be an independent budget office.
Other fixes mentioned, through a charter, could help make the council co-equal in power with the mayor, not subordinated to the executive branch, as the City Council sits today.
When I first wrote about the city charter idea more than a year ago, the concept seemed an abstraction with few political prospects. And that may still be the case.
Yet there is good charter news at hand: State legislation could actually begin taking shape.
Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago has backed the idea for years. What is different now is that Buckner’s stature in Springfield is growing, to the point that he could actually have the juice to help get this done.
Buckner helped negotiate a major reform of the region’s public transit system last year. He has been at the center of the legislature’s Chicago Bears stadium negotiations. He is part of House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s leadership team.
Buckner’s pull helped get a committee hearing last week that featured strong testimony from two key charter backers — Joe Ferguson of the Civic Federation and Joel Hamernick of the community-centered group A More Just Chicago.
BGA Policy backs the charter idea, too, while also putting forward ideas that can be implemented even without a charter. More staffing for COFA is just one example.
Buckner in his testimony last week made clear that piecemeal progress is better than none at all, but it’s still not adequate. “Just because you have a transmission over here and a muffler over here and wheels over here does not mean you have enough to make a car,” he said.
Buckner is right. A holistic approach would be better — fixing problems that are written in law, as well as those based in custom, in ways that a one-piece-at-a-time approach would never accomplish.
Besides, with turns of phrase like a car metaphor, perhaps Buckner can even come up with a moniker that helps make the city charter concept sing.
David Greising is president of the Better Government Association.
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